Exploring immigrant cultures and cuisines on ‘Taste the Nation With Padma Lakshmi’
Padma Lakshmi believes food is a great vehicle to get to know other cultures. And in Season 2 of
“Taste the Nation,” she explores more immigrant communities and their cuisines and addresses a few serious subjects along the way. Premiering Friday, May 5, on Hulu, the sophomore round brings the award-winning cookbook author and presenter to more locales across the U.S. to visit the diverse communities that have shaped what American food is today.
So in the 10 episodes, she goes to Washington D.C., where she joins the Afghan community as they welcome new arrivals in the wake of the war in their homeland; Appalachia, where she discovers new recipes and ingredients and tries her hand at playing the banjo; and Lowell, Mass., home to an enterprising Cambodian community that has revitalized a once-decaying town.
In Friday’s opener, Lakshmi visits Puerto Rico, where there is disagreement over whether the beloved local dish pasteles should be eaten with or without ketchup. In the process, she learns that mid-20th century industrialization by American companies resulted in the decline of agriculture on the island, thus making it difficult to find locally grown produce.
So much of what is sold in markets in Puerto Rico today comes from places like Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and the U.S. mainland. “It’s so sad,” Lakshmi says. “And the thing is Puerto Ricans should have sovereignty over what happens to them and their land and they don’t because they’re really a colony of the United States. We don’t call it a colony; we call it a territory but it’s the same thing.
“It’s because of this ancient, 100-year-old shipping law called the Jones Act,” she continues. “And that law was made not to help Puerto Ricans or even American farmers; it was made to help American corporations. And we’re in the predicament we’re in now and we like to think of ourselves as so evolved but this is something that is still an issue. And I don’t think a lot of people know it.”
Born in India but raised in New York, Lakshmi is an immigrant herself. So she hopes this show can familiarize viewers with cuisines and cultures they might otherwise consider alien.
“At the end of the day, we are all interconnected on this planet,” she says. “I don’t care how much we want to isolate ourselves, we are interconnected. COVID taught us that. And so maybe if people can’t travel themselves, maybe they can travel with their forks, maybe they can travel with this show.
“And this show wasn’t really designed for people who think like me,” she continues. “It was designed for people who don’t think like me and who are maybe afraid of immigrants coming to this country. That’s who the show is designed for.”